o his wife and girls in his Western town--though Western
towns were very grand and amazing in these days, Betty explained, and
knew they could give points to New York. He would not buy the things
he would have bought fifteen years ago. Perhaps, in fact, his wife and
daughters had come with him to London and stayed at the Metropole or
the Savoy, and were at this moment being fitted by tailors and modistes
patronised by Royalty.

"Rosy, look! Do you see who that is? Do you recognise her? It is
Mrs. Bellingham. She was little Mina Thalberg. She married Captain
Bellingham. He was quite poor, but very well born--a nephew of Lord
Dunholm's. He could not have married a poor girl--but they have been so
happy together that Mina is growing fat, and spends her days in taking
reducing treatments. She says she wouldn't care in the least, but Dicky
fell in love with her waist and shoulder line."

The plump, pretty young woman getting out of her victoria before a
fashionable hairdresser's looked radiant enough. She had not yet lost
the waist and shoulder line, though her pink frock fitted her with
discreet tightness. She paused a moment to pat and fuss prettily over
the two blooming, curly children who were to remain under the care of
the nurse, who sat on the back seat, holding the baby on her lap.

"I should not have known her," said Rosy. "She has grown pretty. She
wasn't a pretty child."

"It's happiness--and the English climate--and Captain Dicky. They adore
each other, and laugh at everything like a pair of children. They were
immensely popular in New York last winter, when they visited Mina's
people."

The effect of the morning upon Lady Anstruthers was what Betty had hoped
it might be. The curious drawing near of the two nations began to dawn
upon her as a truth. Immured in the country, not sufficiently interested
in life to read newspapers, she had heard rumours of some of the more
important marriages, but had known nothing of the thousand small details
which made for the weaving of the web. Mrs. Treat Hilyar driving in a
leisurely, accustomed fashion down Bond Street, and smiling casually at
her compatriots, whose "sailing" was as much part of the natural order
of their luxurious lives as their carriages, gave a definiteness to the
situation. Mina Thalberg, pulling down the embroidered frocks over the
round legs of her English-looking children, seemed to narrow the width
of the Atlantic Ocean between Liverpool and the d